CoffeeFiend

Like it was said before, you do want to check if it exists first. Throwing an exception is expected behavior when you try to delete something that doesn't exist. You may still want to add some error handling, particularly to handle the DirectoryNotFoundException exception (it might still happen) as well as IOException (will be thrown if the directories aren't empty and various other reasons) and possibly also UnauthorizedAccessException (thrown if you don't have sufficient permissions to delete it e.g. NTFS ACLs preventing it) As for deleting directories that may not be empty, the Delete method is overloaded, and it's probably better to use the other overload (the one with a bool), and you don't want to repeat too much of the code all over again, so you'd want to create a function similar to this (I've included XML comments, which is something else you should look into -- look at what intellisense pops up when you write "NukeDir(" somewhere): /// <summary> /// Deletes a directory if it exists, and handles the related exceptions /// </summary> /// <param name="dir">the directory name to delete</param> private void NukeDir(string dir) { if (Directory.Exists(dir)) { try { Directory.Delete(dir, true); } catch (DirectoryNotFoundException) { //handle the error whichever way you want } catch (IOException) { //handle the error whichever way you want } catch (UnauthorizedAccessException) { //handle the error whichever way you want } } } and simply call it any way you like in your button click event handler e.g.: string basePath = Environment.CurrentDirectory; string dirToDelete = basePath + @"\abc\def"; NukeDir(dirToDelete); NukeDir(basePath + @"\something\else"); Also, it looks like there's a LOT of namespaces at the top you don't need (unless there is more code you didn't show us). I don't see the point of the Thread.Sleep either (if you included them for debugging, why not step through the code manually instead?)

I wouldn't necessarily call it a feel-good measure. Securing it was a good idea. There were already some people abusing it and it seemingly stopped that. As for batch files, you can do some damage to the system if you have sufficient permissions, but making a self-replicating virus-like contraption in batch files would be quite a feat vbscript/jscript is a lot more powerful, but again, you need permissions to do damage to the system, pretty much all AVs would find a vbs virus (much like the older VBA ones in MS Office docs), and you can also require those to be signed as well (by setting the scripting hosts' trust policy)

A couple points (ignoring the coding style/conventions and other similar things): -you're not using the old ghetto VB versions anymore, so you can let go of the old stuff like vbCrLf and use the new ways like Environment.NewLine() -loads of things could be written in other ways like String("-",107) instead of typing 107 dashes to make a line... -for WMI, you'd want to be using the built-in System.Management namespace, and not using COM interop with a scripting object... I'm not saying you should PInvoke everything (might as well use C++/CLI then) but this is the other extreme -many things are better done otherwise (you're not using vbscript here, you have some options), like for example resolving the CultureInfo from a LCID (e.g. 1033 to English, USA) you should use the methods in the System.Globalization namespace instead of a 6000 line select case e.g. for a C# console app you'd do something like this: CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo(1033); Console.Write("Locale for LCID {0} is {1}\r\n", ci.LCID, ci.NativeName); (not forgetting to add "using System.Globalization;" at the top); the output would be: "Locale for LCID 1033 is English (United States)" There are also a million other ways to check for a x64 platform instead of OSArchitecture (e.g. PInvoke GetNativeSystemInfo, or IsWow64Process assuming a 32bit exe), but the fastest/easiest thing is checking the value of IntPtr.Size (4 for x86, 8 for x64 - assuming you platform is set to "any cpu" under the build tab of your project's properties) or perhaps checking the PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE environment variable (see if it's "AMD64" or "x86") That being said, there would be reasons to have a version that works only on newer OS'es e.g. the NumberOfLogicalProcessors property of the Win32_ComputerSystem class and the NumberOfCores and NumberOfLogicalProcessors properties of the Win32_Processor class. cluberti's vbscript was just fine (arguably better*) as-is There's likely over a dozen such apps on codeproject.com too (I'm not the reinventing-the-wheel kind) 95% of what I'd like to have in such an app can't be gathered from WMI either (loads of it would require reading from the SMBus directly which is quite a pain under Windows, one would have to write their own lm-sensors like lib first, including support for each particular chip used on any board/chipset... which is plain impossible for a single guy) * As in, it had no requirement for the .NET framework, it didn't need to be compiled, was easier to edit/modify, etc. Your code doesn't improve it in any way, nor does it even make any actual use of the features of the language & framework you've used. Like they say, you can write fortran in any language -- but here it's more like you can write vbscript in any language...

It depends on what settings it'll actually run, the speed of your FSB (if there is one...) and other factors. But all by itself, the latency is basically the same (one extra cycle but at higher frequency, or less cycles but at a lower clock, or about 12ns each). The 1066MHz has a little extra bandwidth though. Not that you'll really see any real world difference between the two, unless you spend your days running memory benchmarks or something. I'd go with the better quality RAM (better cooling, 1.8v or as close to it, better brand and warranty, etc) or better priced one instead of choosing based on the very minimal difference in performance between the two.

QFT. Unfortunately, there's a LOT of admin folks out there who can't even do that. Admins who can't do basic stuff like this (and I've seen ridiculous numbers of them) are very inefficient. But yeah, there's a lot of different things to cover: Active Directory, Group Policies, Exchange (good outlook knowledge definitely a plus), networking (including TCP/IP of course), IOS or Junos, etc. And preferably being fairly knowledgeable with everything else you'll need: Backup Exec or other backup software? SQL Server or other DBs? IIS? Sharepoint? Maintaining an intranet site? ... Basic knowledge of field-specific apps you use (CAD or whatever it may be) is always a plus.

So you call something that requires an P1 CPU that's over a decade old and about 3 pennies worth of disk space (closer to one penny if you only install what you need -- and the full install would have easily fit on my old quantum fireball back in 1995) bloated? The PC I had back in year 2000 (years before Office 2003 came out) was already more than enough to handle it (that will be 10 years ago in about a week). Might as well go back to running Win 3.1 then...

MS Office 4.3: Don't recall, but used it on 386's (running Win 3.x) just fine MS Office 95: 386DX, 8MB RAM, and up to 88MB of HD space MS Office 97: 486, 8 to 12MB of RAM, around 120MB HD space MS Office 2000: P1 75, 128MB RAM for the OS (assuming XP) + 8MB/app open, around 200 to 400MB HD space MS Office XP: P1 133, 128MB RAM for the OS (assuming XP) + 8MB/app open, 230MB HD space for the Pro edition MS Office 2003: P1 233 or better (P3 recommended), 128MB RAM, around 400MB HD MS Office 2007: 500MHz, 256 RAM, up to 1.5-3GB HD space depending on the edition None. A P4 from year 2000 (pretty much 10 years ago) will run Office 2007 just fine if it has enough RAM. If your PC can't handle that, you're well beyond overdue for an upgrade. I'm looking forward to Office 2010 already Haven't tried the beta yet though.

Great pick! H-IPS is very nice and the specs are great. It has pretty much everything my monitor has (tilt, flip, USB hub, etc) and even more video inputs (an extra DVI and DisplayPort, instead of a VGA) which is quite impressive by itself. If I was in the market for a new monitor, this would probably be my pick too. Sure, it's not $200 but it's not in the same class as a $200 LCD either.

If you want a IPS panel then have a look at the Dell Ultrasharp series.

Haven't checked SLI in a while, but two 4830's in crossfire is faster than a 4870. The performance gains over a single 4830 are pretty good seemingly (sometimes over double e.g. in the COD4 demo) Either ways, it'll also double power consumption (and fan noise), so I'd still look into getting one faster card (selling the old one to pay for part of it), although the faster cards can be pricey (and power hungry as well)

No point, as each card has to have the same things in memory as the other it won't use the extra RAM at all. It's not really a gimmick. More RAM = more space for higher quality textures. But at some point, it's not the limitation anymore (loads of RAM on a slow card won't do you any good, but a RAM upgrade on a really fast card might help) Ideally, you want to use identical cards.

Which basically means nothing. Combined power and quality are the main concerns here, and we can't guess anything about either. Either ways, it's not sounding too great to begin with. Good PSUs around that wattage can push around 40 to 45A combined on the 12v rails, and here you likely have 30 tops, so about 360W out of 550W. That's not exactly amazing. I mean, I have a 350W Seasonic that pushes almost as much (324W). So there's a large amount of power you'll never be able to use (most likely on the 5v rail). There are 400w PSUs that easily match this (and likely are of better quality and more efficient too). If your motherboard (no idea what you have) has the options, why not try it? Take it slow (gradually) and check your temps.

Drives spinning up is the least of my worries So the menu is still loaded before I've released the start key or mouse button. Hardly a problem (and it's not like it doesn't do any caching either). Nevermind 99% of my time wasted there is looking for the program I want and not for the start menu to respond. And Vista/Win7 fixed that with the search. It hardly feels slow, and if $900 is what it takes to make it faster, then it'll wait Nevermind, I'd be due for more storage, a faster CPU (which also basically means a new motherboard and RAM) and a bunch of other things first, so not happening anytime soon

That's pretty good performance. I wouldn't know what to do with a tiny 30GB though Windows alone (including pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys and temp files) will eat right through that, all by itself (not even counting large user profiles, the windows installer cache, the client side cache, system restore points, the recycle bin or any of that stuff). A pair of the 120GB (or a single 250GB) OCZ Vertex would be usable (including some apps), but that's like $900 right there Considering twice that much storage on plain old hard drives is worth $50... For $900, I'd be getting five 2TB drives instead (10TB total, or about 40x more space). Yep, looks like I'll be waiting a while longer. The Vertex has full TRIM support as of firmware v1.4, which was released a while ago. It should already have it but you can always check.

Does anyone really think they'd give it a bad review, when that very same company likely gives them boatloads of money for advertising? 99% of computer magazines are totally worthless. Norton has been pretty awful for a number of years. From unimpressive detection rates (according to independant tests such as VB100), not being good at removing existing infections, breaking systems routinely (e.g. TCP/IP stack) especially while uninstalling, it causes BSODs, and it has a long history of being worthless in general (too easily pwned by virus makers i.e. turn off its services using WMI; or even used by script kiddies to disconnect people's connections simply by sending "start keylogger" messages). The bloat and performance reduction however have been rather impressive. They'd give it away and I still wouldn't want of it. So 2 years for $115, per PC? They gotta be kidding -- there's far better out there for free. As far as I'm concerned, the only good Norton products ever are Norton Utilities (for MS-DOS), and Ghost (but that was bought from Binary Research so it doesn't really count and TrueImage is better too; they also bought Veritas which also had some decent stuff). Well, SymNRT is good too, so that's 2 decent products in ~30 years.

Actually, I wouldn't keep those either. From looking at what he intends to run, it's WAY beyond overkill. Adobe CS4? If he means Photoshop CS4 by that, as one of his most intensive apps, then a CPU ~1/4 of that would be plenty for anything but the most demanding stuff. In fact, even on an ~2 year old C2D (OC'ed dinky E2160), doing fairly complex stuff in Photoshop (files over 100 megapixels, a few layer layer groups, loads of layer masks, working in LAB and CMYK, etc) it doesn't even feel remotely slow. The main limit I run into is RAM (often over 4GB with such images), not CPU, and I have more RAM than he plans on getting, so he'd be far better off spending the extra money on more RAM for this. The video card acceleration also speeds it up considerably. And his other listed uses don't sound like they would make use of a high end CPU either (Office? You could run that on an old P4 just fine). With his usage, he most likely wouldn't see any difference whatsoever between a i5 750 and the i7. The i7 is like 10% faster and 50% more expensive. That money could be better spent elsewhere IMO. It's not like the small difference in speed will give it any meaningful increase in longevity (usable life) either. Why go with a high end CPU, and pair it with only 4GB? Way to make it crawl. If you multitask a lot, and use memory-heavy apps like Photoshop (like mentioned before), this will make your system FAR slower than a slower CPU (like the i5 750) paired with more RAM. Having too little RAM has always been the very best way to slow down a computer. And now with newer versions of Windows, the OS uses it for caching too (superfetch). Then again, why waste money (like 75% extra) on DDR3-2000 when it'll run at 1333 anyway? More waste of money (unless he plans on mad OC'ing, which he failed to mention) So you say you don't want SLI, and then you spend an extra $100 on a fancy board with the extra x16 2.0 slot? With his usage/stated needs, I don't see what it brings him over a board that's basically half the price, like for example a GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (also two x16 slots, also has eSATA and plenty of SATA, it has firewire, toslink and spdif, the same 4 DIMM slots, etc; and it's also high quality: 2oz copper, solid caps, good mosfets and all) But there's plenty of other great boards well under $200 if that one doesn't work for you (e.g. need the x1 slots). I'd understand the expensive motherboard if you were getting a socket 1366 system with X58 chipset, for it's triple channel RAM (6 DIMM/24GB max), the extra PCI-e lanes for those with a lot of bandwidth-hugry cards, being ready for the 6-core i7's, and some other nice and bleeding edge options found on some boards (e.g. SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 like on the P6X58D premium) but here you don't seem to want or need any of it. That board is overpriced anyway, even for a premium board by asus. It's almost the same price as the significantly nicer Maximus III Formula. Again, money better spent elsewhere IMO. Without going into ati/nvidia debates for the Nth time, if I was spending over $200 on a video card, I'd want DirectX 11. Eyefinity and extra connectors would definitely be nice to have as well. And if he plans on gaming (which he hinted to), with the lastest games maxed out, then this will most likely be his main bottleneck (not the CPU). A i5 750 with a better video card would likely perform better with most games. So you blow like $1500 on a high end rig, and go for a $65 house brand PSU? On that budget, I'd definitely be getting something a lot nicer (better brand, better quality, more efficient, and if you can spend that much then you can definitely afford a modular one) Not a bad case at all. But the only real reason to pick this (over say, a Antec 300) is the space inside. And here, you only got the one drive in your machine, no liquid cooling or anything (no mentions of anything that would requite it either). Based on that, I'd sooner spend the extra on a smaller case of better quality, or even just get a smaller case (the 900 already seems like too much here). Still, this is the least bad choice on the list IMO (just pointlessly too big) A minuscule 30GB... Ouch. I carry more than that in my pockets everyday. Even my nearly 5 year old mp3 player has more space than this. Like I said, there's basically nothing on the list I'd keep. Going with a i5, RAM that isn't faster than the CPU will run it at, different mobo, smaller case, you'd be left with a few hundred $ that would go well towards many different things: more RAM, a better PSU, more storage, possibly a faster video card (if you're a lot into gaming) and such things.

SATA channels aren't shared like IDE. And yes, you can RAID them for extreme performance. Your limitations will be that of your controller itself (e.g. ICH9R) and various interconnects on its path (ICH to MCH, FSB, PCI-e lanes, etc) and so on. I very much doubt you'll manage 800MB/s, likely more like half that (guesstimating, not knowing anything about your hardware). If you want extreme speeds, plan on having to spend serious coin on a high end RAID card (and of course have the x8 slot for it on your mobo too) SLC vs MLC... That's just one factor. Even the absolute best SLC NAND flash when paired with a poor controller and firmware will perform poorly. Either ways, even MLC is still WAY too expensive for me (and I don't want to settle for a tiny drive either). And SLC pricing on the better SSDs like the Intel X25-E Extreme is just unreal (close to $15/GB, when plain old magnetic storage is about $0.08/GB). I don't foresee buying a SSD in 2010 (I need space, NOT speed -- I'd be more interested in even cheaper storage) @dencorso: I'm not totally sure these benchmarks are perfectly valid. There's the whole dirty blocks thing again... Benchmarking writes to NAND flash is tricky, unless all the blocks are erased first.

No kidding. Decent DDR2 @ 800MHz has a memory bandwidth of 6400 MB/s (DDR3 @ 2200MHz would be an impressive 17600MB/s). Even with bottlenecks elsewhere, no SSD on earth can touch this (even in RAID0 on a unlimited budget you'd have a hard time even approaching that). It very much depends. As they get more usage, SSDs do slow down (as pages fill and it has to erase them before writing again basically). There was a good explanation here. This RunCore SSD doesn't seem to support TRIM (although the Indilinx controller could probably do it, with the right firmware and all) so it will likely slow down over time (then again, some firmware versions seem to do some maintenance -- free space consolidation and erase in its idle time, so it may not be too bad still). Then again, XP doesn't support it either.

They've been one-upped . Over 2GB/sec (very much limited by the PCI-e bus, they could probably get twice that otherwise)Either ways, I'll let SSD tech mature and come down in price for a while. The only somewhat-affordable drives with good performance (TRIM support and all) are just way too small still. Edit: there's also the 16 Intel X25-E SSD RAID, if you got 15G's or so burning a hole in your pocket.

Mostly everything.

Agreed. Development stopped and I don't see Nuhi coming back out of the blue and making major changes to his app, for a version of Windows that's 2 versions of date and that's almost a decade old. Locked.

It's EOL'ed since last may, so nope. Not in stock anywhere. Not that it would be worth it either (same price as the newer quads, just slower). Intel won't make sub-$200 quads. They just discontinue the older models like the Q6600 and replace them. At TigerDirect.ca (mind you that's the very last place I'd shop at), the Q6700 is $215 + taxes + shipping, or $242.67 shipped. Same story for the Q9400. ($190 * exchange rate) + international shipping + customs clearance would be a lot higher than $200 still (easily over $250). And the thought of possibly having to RMA something internationally isn't very appealing. Nevermind, they say they don't ship to Canada: and: And it's also out of stock (the Q6600 won't be back in stock anytime soon either) ...for something that doesn't exist? The only way to get a quad with VT under $200 in Canada right now is to go with AMD. And at $200+ for an older socket 775 quad, I might as well sell my current CPU + 8GB of fast DDR2 and nice motherboard (would sell easily over $200 locally, so $450 or so budget already) and get a i5 750 + socket 1156 mobo and 8GB DDR3 instead for like $50 extra. I don't see the point in spending nearly as much (like $50 less) for a slower chip and being stuck with the older chipset, DDR2 instead of DDR3 (more expensive to upgrade already) and overall older tech. The i5 delivers more bang for your buck, is more modern and future proof. Then again, I'm not looking at spending that much on an upgrade (as much as the kids' last boxes cost altogether -- and they do have VT) that I don't really need speed-wise (don't want to downgrade either - especially not spend a 3 digit sum for a downgrade!), just to have VT.

Which Intel quad? Because LOADS of them don't have VT. If I look at what's in stock at my usual place (ncix), under $200, there's only the Q8200, and that doesn't have VT (newegg doesn't have anything else to offer either). The Q8400 does, but it's $201.65 + taxes + shipping (so more like $230) I'm just not dropping 90% of the price of a i5 750 on a chip that's more like 3/4 the speed (less bang for the buck). I might as well sell my existing CPU/RAM/Mobo too, and get a i5 instead as it would basically cost the same. Then again, AMD has a decent quad with AMD-V for $100... You do, if you want to run a x64 guest OS. Also, your Q6600 has VT.

And are all slower than my existing CPU. The E6500 would be about $130 CAD taxes in and shipped, that's a bit much for something that would make my computer slower. Anything with VT that's any faster than what I got starts at $200 with taxes, at which point I might as well bite the bullet and get an i5 instead or go with AMD instead.

The thing is, those are only a tiny minority (mainly nostalgic folks I assume) and vastly outnumbered by those who would rather use something else. There's no slowing down of that mass "exile" either. Win98 is now down to 0.09%, WinME 0.04%, and Win95 doesn't even register on the scale. At the current speeds, the Win9x combined market share will be 0.1% by next month, and still keep dropping steadily beyond that. At the time of the post you quoted, there were about 4 million Win9x users left, and going by the same total number of users (1,463,632,361) and the new percentages, now there would be 1.9 million left, and about 1.5 by next month. If you keep the current average drop rate for this year (e.g. -0.016%/mo for Win98 -- a linear curve) then combined Win9x market share will hit below 0.01% before next summer. Even if you go with a exponential curve, you still get below 0.01% within 6 months (and below 0.005% in under a year; which would mean a total number of users being well below 100k) So a dozen new users on these Win9x forum section every few months isn't exactly a lot. Oh, and BTW, I wouldn't want of a Mac, even to use as a boat anchor